The Digital Hoards

The Digital Hoards.

We Are Becoming Digital Pack Rats

“Personal computers — our jukeboxes, photo labs, accountants and
film studios — are becoming the proverbial junk drawer, scattered with
scads of must-have information. Sister devices such as digital cameras,
MP3 players and digital video recorders overflow with often barely a
bite of spare storage.

The ravenous nature of society coupled with the quest
for convenience has spawned a nation of digital pack rats, eager to
possess every gigabyte of media they can download, and too greedy — or
lazy — to let it go….

One's desk might be clean and tidy, but countless computer desktops have become chaotic.

'It's like an infinite attic, and we're filling it,'
said Peter Lyman, a professor at the University of California at
Berkeley School of Information Management and Systems. 'People are
feeling overwhelmed and trying to find coping strategies.' ” [The Indianapolis Star, via Library Link of the Day]

Heh – good timing! I just wrote about the rise of the
personal server as part of my “Product Pipeline” column for the next
issue of netConnect.
The day after I turned it in, I bought a 1GB SD card for my Treo
because I can't carry around enough ones and zeroes on my current 512MB
version. Storage storage everywhere, and not a drop to drink! I paid a
little under $100 for the new card, a Gigabyte of portable storage the
size of a postage stamp! Next year, terabytes will be affordable.

To quote Roy Tennant, “Storage is officially cheaper than dirt.” [The Shifted Librarian]

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